Kush and Orange Juice

Without a major label deal or superstar allegiances, Wiz has turned himself into a hip-hop star by rapping about weed, girls, and smoking weed with girls.

Kids love them some Wiz Khalifa. In a recent Washington City Paper review, the rap blogger Noz described a sold-out 9:30 Club full of late-teens/early-twenties fans, all singing along with the young Pittsburgh rapper's entire set. A little bit of YouTube research shows similar scenes-- at clubs across the country, not just the ones in the Eastern corridor. And when Kush and Orange Juice, the new Wiz mixtape, hit the internet last week, it was a #1 Twitter trending topic for most of the day. And though it's important not to put too much stock in something as ephemeral as trending topics, it at least means there are a whole lot of people talking about a rapper with no major label deal and no superstar allegiances. It's pretty impressive.

Wiz's appeal isn't too hard to figure out. Though he lost his deal with Warner Bros. a while back, you never hear any of the bitterness usually associated with big-label refugees. Instead, he talks his shit with a blasé assurance; one chorus on the mixtape goes, "We belong on the top, but we ain't trippin'/ Cuz we'll get there in a minute." For the most part, he raps about only three things: Weed, girls, and smoking weed with girls (usually your girl). His rap style is easy and conversational, a pinched murmur that never leans too hard on punchlines or narrative. He's got this donkey giggle that he lets loose often, and it might beat out Lil Wayne's guffaw as rap's most irritating laugh, no mean feat. He sounds like the kid two dorm rooms down, bragging about whatever insane party he was at last night while he munches Froot Loops out of the box and watches cartoons on the common-room TV. He's charismatic in a completely relatable way.

He's also got a great ear for beats. The tracks are airy, diffuse things, full of smooth 1980s-funk synths and drums that amble along slowly and quietly. His choices in samples suggest a lot of time watching TV while stoned: Frou Frou's Garden State end-credits song "Let Go" on "In the Cut", Disney princess Demi Lovato's Camp Rock soundtrack single "Our Time Is Here" on "We're Done". "Good Dank" is all warm, rippling psych-funk-- its guitars and organs woozy as all hell, its drums completely nonexistent. And rather than bulldozing through these beats, Wiz just dances around them, never letting his delivery settle into a consistent cadence. Often, he sings his choruses in a calm, casual quaver. Sometimes, he skips rapping altogether. On "Up", he spends four minutes just singing the praises of weed over spaced-out Rhodes plinks, ending by repeating, "Everything's better when you're high," over and over.

When a more conventional rapper like Killa Kyleon or Big K.R.I.T. shows up, the contrast speaks volumes. Those guys are both very good at what they do, but they sound almost old-fashioned in this context, nicely breaking up the half-committed shit-talk. Wiz never sounds like he has a lot at stake; he talks like life is a long, unchanging progression of joints and hotel rooms and girls, which, for him, maybe it is. Among his most characteristic lines is this: "While you at home on Twitter, trying to hack her page and shit/ We smoking and cracking jokes on how lame you is." That kind of indolent wit can lead to some truly dubious ideas, like when Wiz sang Beyoncé's "If I Were a Boy" as "If I Were a Lame" on 2009's Burn After Rolling mixtape, or when he tries his hand at reggae on "Still Blazin" here. But for the most part, Kush and Orange Juice is a surprisingly relaxed and easy listen, a great soundtrack for a barbecue or a spring-weather drive. And that's all it wants to be, so mission accomplished.